Batman Flys Over Yahoo

Wednesday, it was Mitsubishi's turn. Today it's Batman's turn. The "caped crusader" has taken over the Yahoo homepage with a bunch of flying bats and a fairly friendly half screen, window shade ad unit promoting the upcoming movie. And no, it doesn't work with Firefox.

Online Marketers Say Cookies Are Yummy

In an effort to counter the bad wrap foisted on the cookie, an identifying file placed on a person's computer marketers use to serve targeted ads and sites use to remember people's login information, online marketers are launching a "cookies can be good for you" campaign. Dynamic Logic President Nick Nyhan, who's company measures online ad performance, co-founded safecount.org along with Microsoft to convince antispyware firms to allow certain "good" cookies through their filters.

While methods to replace the cookie are currently being developed, such as United Virtualities' PIE, the campaign hopes to educate people of the cookie's benefits such as saving login info and remembering certain website configuration preferences rather than focusing on its advertising tracking capabilities to which people will just thumb their noses.

Sperm On A Mission Gets Confused

Usually sperm are on a single minded mission and not much can be done to stop them from accomplishing that mission. One lone sperm in this viral, the first to make rounds on the new ViralBomb email list, approaches the point of return and does experience second thoughts. You'll chuckle at what's being promoted.

Viral Advertising Announcement List Launched

Dabitch from the weblog Adland has launched a mailing list where "creators worldwide announce their release of a new campaign (since the web is worldwide), where viral colleagues in the business, ad bloggers, rubbernecked viral addicts, trade press journalists and other web heads are on the list and can stay hip to the latest." If you're interested, sign up here.

Vienna Ads Go Under Cover

AdFreak reports on a pair or artists who convinced area merchants in Vienna and its Chamber of Commerce to go along with an ad cover up scheme in which all signage and ads on a popular shopping street were covered for a two week period. In the end, the Chamber of Commerce paid advertisers $245,000 for the privilege of covering their ads.

More Kooky American Apparel Ads

Always pushing limits and questioning normalcy, Dov Charney's American Apparel and its advertising campaigns continue to walk the edge with strange statements like "Women initiate most domestic violence, yet out of a thousand cases of domestic violence, maybe one is involving a man. And this has made a victim culture out of women. See another ad here.

Marketers Want More Metrics From Print

Print advertising was on the witness stand today at the annual Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Print Advertising Forum, held at the Grand Hyatt in New York.

The keynote address presented by Mark Kaline, Global Media Manager, Ford Motor Company, and Chair, ANA Print Advertising Committee, and Robert Liodice, CEO and president of the ANA, focused on current challenges in the print advertising space and the increasing needs of advertisers for improvements in marketing accountability.

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End Hunger Viral Work Challenged, Praised

Good Or Bad Viral?

the now corporation and HB XIV created a site, intended to virally call attention to hunger, called For Mother's Day which included a video montage of women breastfeeding babies. The site originally linked to charitable hunger-relief organization America's Second Harvest until they complained, sending a threatening letter to Domains by Proxy, under which the now corporation had registered the site, asking the link to America's Second Harvest be removed from the For Mother's Day site. Even though the video could be seen as a bit racy by some, Hollywood actor Jeff Bridges, who runs his own hunger-relief organization called the End Hunger Network, had no problem with it and sent a complimentary note to the now corporation's president, Owen Plotkin. The For Mother's Day site now links to Bridges' End Hunger Network site and, heeding the request from America's Second Harvest, Plotkin removed that organization's link from the Mother's Day site.

Following the creation of the For Mother's Day site, Plotkin launched Paris Hilton Films, another site intended to virally spread the end hunger message. Paris Hilton Films, which features Carl's Jr. imagery of Hilton and pseudo videos, prominently features Bridges End Hunger site. Plotkin says, of these two efforts, he is simply trying to raise awareness of hunger issues. While acknowledging the racy aspects of his efforts, he doesn't understand why an organization like America's Second Harvest would want to limit exposure to its efforts.

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GoDaddy Loves Its Customers

We just registered a domain with GoDaddy for another site. It's the first time we've used GoDaddy and we're sure its low price and hot Super Bowl commercial had something to do with our choosing GoDaddy this time around. All went well during the registration process and we figured that would be the last time we had any contact with GoDaddy until the registration would have to be renewed two years from now. Well, weren't we pleasantly surprised to receive a call from GoDaddy just now from their customer service department checking to see if the registration process went well. It was an unscripted, honest, un-rushed inquiry about our experience with GoDaddy which, without seeming forced, included the necessary "how did you hear of GoDaddy?" and "have have you considered our site traffic building service?"

The call was a positively shocking experience in this day of "couldn't give a shit" customer service most companies provide. The entire experience has now guaranteed GoDaddy our repeat business. The Super Bowl spot grabbed attention. Customer service instilled complete trust and confidence.

Distorted Dog Promotes Olympus Cameras

This is freaky. Very freaky. This spot, called Distorted Dog, another in a series for Olympus cameras, uses distorted imagery of dogs to somehow convey Olympus cameras are better than the competition. While we've never seen a camera do this to our dog, we hope we never see a dog like this one.